Ring in the New Year with the Palm Treo 700w!! This compact all-in-one smart phone features Broadband speed and Windows Mobile 5.0!! The all-digital Palm Treo 700w also comes with Wireless sync, Active Sync 4.0, Built-in Blue tooth technology, Windows Media Player 10 and a 1.3 mega pixel digital camera. Combine these powerful features with its integrated organizer functionality and you get a smart phone that delivers on everything you need when you need it.

An SD card is *not* RAM. An SD card is flash. According to the article the 700w has 52mb of user-accessible flash.

I know what RAM is, I didn't word that quite right. The point I was trying to make is that "Memory" is cheap enough these days, that skimping on it is unexplainable. This goes also for the 650, which's lack thereoff was voted one of the biggest tech disapointments of 2004 by Engadget.

HP has officially ruined it's own platform and kicked webOS loyalists and early TouchPad adopters to the curb. You think after you drop it like a hot potato and mention it made no money and is costing you money, anyone else wants it??? Way to go HP!!

And some people are fools to keep believing their hype. HP has shown they will throw webOS under the bus and people are still having faith in them??? News flash: if it's own company won't stand behind it, it's finished!

I know what RAM is, I didn't word that quite right. The point I was trying to make is that "Memory" is cheap enough these days, that skimping on it is unexplainable. This goes also for the 650, which's lack thereoff was voted one of the biggest tech disapointments of 2004 by Engadget.

It's not really as cheap as it seems. Here's a back-of-the-envelope calculation (numbers are guesses based on their recent financial statement).

If the extra memory costs only $1 per unit, and Palm sells 1 million units, that extra memory costs Palm $1 million in lost *profit*. If you assume Palm makes a $200 profit per phone, Palm would need to sell 5000 more phones to *break even*.

Do you think increasing the RAM would cause sales of the 700w to go up by more than 5000 units? The people making these decisions at Palm obviously didn't...

One 32MB mobile ram module is about $10 (if bought in a 100), probably a bit cheaper for 100 000. So say they $10 000 000 by going with one 32MB instead of two. To get that back they would have to sell 50 000 extra devices. Now it seems as if it does not make business sense, doesn't it.

However... 50 000 is 5% of a million. Now would having a device with only 10 MB ram free turn away 5% of potential buyers. I am sure it would. And if these people are influential (as power users tend to be) they could lose even more buyers, like 20-30% of their potential market. (Look at the failure of the Motorola MPX as an example of this). Also look at the negative buzz this move has created already.

So yes, sometimes companies can be penny wise and pound foolish. If they have gone with 32MB RAM this would be one of those cases.

Palm's biggest problem is entering the Windows market and potentially developing the reputation for putting out quickly outdated devices. I would not have "upgraded" to the 650 from my 600 if this wasn't done for me automatically by Verizon.

While Palm may do well in the short run, within a few weeks after release of the 700w the competitors will come out with their versions that will all be touted as the phone that will last you if they do have far more RAM. Palm can expect to see interest drop off, especially if reviews will state the obvious. Any incentive I had to move to a 700w was killed with (1) memory issue (2) 240 x 240 screen. Both are apparently below the levels put out by the competition currently or imminently.

Treos will sell because the form factor is good and because of the Palm. This will make money for the executives in the short run. The real question is whether Palm will last in the long run. Now they have been reduced to nothing more than a hardware manufacturer of mobile phones and facing continued, stiffer competition.

It's not really as cheap as it seems. Here's a back-of-the-envelope calculation (numbers are guesses based on their recent financial statement).

If the extra memory costs only $1 per unit, and Palm sells 1 million units, that extra memory costs Palm $1 million in lost *profit*. If you assume Palm makes a $200 profit per phone, Palm would need to sell 5000 more phones to *break even*.

Do you think increasing the RAM would cause sales of the 700w to go up by more than 5000 units? The people making these decisions at Palm obviously didn't...

Yes, I believe that extra RAM would increase sales by AT LEAST 5000 units - that's less than 0.5% of the total number of 650s sold. One large corporate customer would push you over that number.

Well, that at least is good news. Maybe Treonauts do have a preproduction model with limited RAM. Lets cross our fingers.

Surur

The other possibility is that the Treonauts unit does have 128/64. The memory applet doesn't report the total memory, only what is available to the OS. As I reported above, even though the 6700 has 128 MB of ROM, the memory app reports it as 43.5. To see the total ROM/RAM in the device, you have to open the Device Info app in Setting and hit the Hardware tab. Treonauts aren't familiar with WM devices (as they admit), so it is possible that they don't know this. and did't know where to look.

The other possibility is that the Treonauts unit does have 128/64. The memory applet doesn't report the total memory, only what is available to the OS. As I reported above, even though the 6700 has 128 MB of ROM, the memory app reports it as 43.5. To see the total ROM/RAM in the device, you have to open the Device Info app in Setting and hit the Hardware tab. Treonauts aren't familiar with WM devices (as they admit), so it is possible that they don't know this. and did't know where to look.

Unlikely. The numbers are from a screenshot.

However this blog from MS indicates they artificially restricted the ram available to developers to force them to write tight code, but that this was only for development models.

The general consensus among the commenters was that WM5 took three times as much RAM to boot as WM2003 SE. This was shocking to me, because I know the steps we took to keep that from happening. WM5 is a massive upgrade, with a new OS, new apps, and a ton of new features. We were very worried about bloat, and did a number of things to combat it. We funded a group whose sole job was to analyze performance (including RAM usage) and keep it under control. Those folks did a bunch of work to reduce RAM usage. We also purposely limited the amount of RAM available on the devices our developers used. Almost all of our devices only had 32M of RAM, and the one device that had more, we artificially limited to only use 32M. We didn't want anyone to get lazy.

Would you believe that moving to PS can double your battery life and enable devices with significantly more storage than were previously possible?

Here's why. Remember that RAM requires power to keep its data. The amount of power needed is linear with the amount of RAM. That is to say, 64M of RAM needs twice as much power to keep it running as 32M does. 128M needs four times as much power as 32, etc. And this power drain is constant. The RAM is sucking your batteries dry while the device is in use and while it's suspended. It even continues to drain your batteries when they are "critically low" and the system won't let you turn it on. Also, people didn't buy 128M RAM devices for the program space. They bought them to store stuff in. And those devices had lousy battery lives as a result.

It's a screen shot of the Memory app (as I indicated in my post) which doesn't report the total amount of ROM/RAM in the device. The "Total" it reports is only what is available to the OS. Don't ask me why (no one knows why MS designed it this way), it just does. To see the true amount of ROM/RAM installed in the device, you need to look at the Device Info applet, not the Memory applet.

It's a screen shot of the Memory app (as I indicated in my post) which doesn't report the total amount of ROM/RAM in the device. The "Total" it reports is only what is available to the OS. Don't ask me why (no one knows why MS designed it this way), it just does. To see the true amount of ROM/RAM installed in the device, you need to look at the Device Info applet, not the Memory applet.

Its completely inconceivable that the various buffers, page pool etc that WM requires could take 35 MB. That memory applet gives indication enough of what's really going on.

Its completely inconceivable that the various buffers, page pool etc that WM requires could take 35 MB. That memory applet gives indication enough of what's really going on.

Surur

Nothing is inconcievable when you are dealing with Microsoft.

All us WM 5 HTC device owners know (this goes for the Universal, Wizard and Apache) is that we all have 128 MB of storage ROM, but the Memory applet reports the Total as 43.5 on all of these devices. For the RAM, we have 64 MB, but the Memory app reports the total as 49.42. The Device Info app reports the total as 128/64.

Exactly. Increasing the RAM hurts battery life. Since everyone wants faster CPUs, multiple radios (phone and wifi), more pixels, they had to figure out how to conserve power somehow.

The percentage of power RAM pulls from the battery is nearly unmeasureable compared to other functions. Why do you think a PPC (RAM) can maintain power for days (weeks) on standby, a PPC phone (RAM, Radio) can remain on standby for days, and a PPC can only run continuously for 2-4 hours (RAM, Screen, Processor, external read-writes, etc). So a doubling of RAM and the presumed doubling of power consumption doesn't really matter much if the RAM is only drawing 1% of the power in the first place.

Yes, I believe that extra RAM would increase sales by AT LEAST 5000 units - that's less than 0.5% of the total number of 650s sold.

I think so too -- but the people at Palm making these decisions have access to a lot more data and considerations (like battery life) than either of us; hopefully they made the right choice.

Originally Posted by skfny

One large corporate customer would push you over that number.

Perhaps one of the Verizon people can comment, but my impression is that a large corporate customer (for something like a 650) is 500 phones, not 5000. On the earnings call Ed said that corporate customers are generally deploying Treos only to execs and upper management.

But why did someone who send a WM Treo that is a pre-production unit with limited memory enabled to a Palm OS Treo blog site. I like that he is putting up the info but its almost like they are trying to run clockwise and counter clockwise at the same time, stupid is as stupid does.